Streaming movies directly to your phone is common today. So, as faded movie star Norma Desmond watches Gloria Swanson proclaim from the palm of her hand, “I’m big, it’s the pictures that got smaller,” writer/director Billy Wilder could never have imagined. It contains a layer of sarcasm that wasn’t there. Of course, someone streaming something to their phone is likely watching something on TikTok that’s even shorter and faster-paced than his 110-minute black-and-white thing. That’s for sure.
All generations can pick and choose what they want from previous generations with the same arrogance and ego-driven self-importance that previous generations had when they chose the bones of previous generations. Born in 1945, Pete Townshend is at the forefront of the baby boomers born shortly after World War II ended. Pete and the rest of the generation that fathered baby boomers have been called the greatest generation, but it’s hardly a self-praise.
It may be helpful to take a moment to define a few terms. What exactly is generation? Today, the popular definition is the period during which the statistically largest portion of the population born in the last 30 years dominates the zeitgeist. You have entered a new phase of being a member of Generation Z. People joke about millennials, but that group is now old news and just as dated as all previous generations. Generations — Baby Boomers, Generation X, Fragile Generation, Intermediate, Neutral, Trustworthy, Unwavering, Blank Slate.
Marlon Brando, like Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and the first wave of rockers, fell somewhere between the all-time greats and the baby boomers. He’s too young to fight the Nazis and too old to go to Woodstock. But when Brand replied, “What did you get?” When a local girl asks him what he’s rebelling against in the movie The Wild One, it sets the stage for the ’60s, a picture-perfect building built by boys returning from war. caused a rebellion against the prefabricated community.
Like many boomers, Pete seems to have a chip on his shoulder with this song. It has some defense. He knows people disrespect him just because he’s around. Perhaps he feels he will never be measured, or knows they resent the newly abundant leisure of his generation. I hope to get rid of it. He dies before he grows old, hoping to be replaced to replace them. Unable to even point himself, Pete relies on Roger in his mouthpiece to throw out swear words. That fear might be the song’s most honest. We all blame previous generations, but somehow we know it’s only a matter of time before we become previous generations.
Pete will probably tell you first. He has a front row seat to his generation’s history. He could read picket signs against hate and war. Well, that certainly ended it. thank you for using. Every generation seems to have the arrogance of ignorance, choosing to throw away what they did before rather than building on the past. It is of no avail to them to offer them wisdom, and to tell them what they have learned in the same path that he has followed. It’s entirely possible that you looked up at Pete and told him you couldn’t see him or hear him.
And that gave Pete another idea.
Excerpt from Bob Dylan’s THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG. © 2022 Bob Dylan All rights reserved. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio and read by Bob Dylan, Oscar Isaac, John Goodman, Alfre Woodward and Jeffrey Wright. other(P) 2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.